


A Paradox a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

by trascendenza



Series: Paradox-a-day 'verse [1]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Threshold
Genre: Crossover, Doppelganger, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 13:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"Doctor," the voice went on. "It appears he is awake."</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Paradox a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

**Author's Note:**

> [Mirror](http://trascendenza.dreamwidth.org/16629.html#lastwordslinger).

Fenway woke up slowly, his head pounding like he'd gone on a bender with Ramsey last night, mouth dry and cottony, every muscle screaming in protest as he started to move.

"How the hell are my _eyelids_ sore?" He tried to moan, but it came out more like sandpaper scraping against rhinoceros hide.

"He appears to be waking," a cool, clipped voice boomed off to his right.

"For god's sake, would you turn it down a notch or twenty? Some of us are trying to recover from grievous bodily harm, over here," and this time he sounded a little less like a malfunctioning power tool and a little more like a human being. Well, marginally.

"I apologize," the voice whispered, "allow me to modulate my volume to more appropriately correspond with the increased aural sensitivity you appear to be experiencing."

"Doctor," the voice went on. "It appears he is awake."

"Give the man a prize," Fenway croaked sarcastically, and attempted to crowbar his eyelids open with his ocular muscles. "I've done everything but get up on the table and dance, for crying out loud." He struggled to sit up, which he knew wasn't the best idea, but his memories were slowly starting to filter back and he felt a vague sense of alarm growing in his chest, and if he was going to wake up to a gun in his face or a bomb strapped to his precious body parts, he at least wanted to face it sitting up, not flat on his back.

"Sir, please, you are in no condition --"

"I think I'll be the judge of what I'm in the condition to do, thank you very --"

And then his vision cleared and he was facing a mirror. Except it wasn't a mirror, it was clearly an LSD flashback, because he was seeing _himself_. Painted white. With slicked back black hair and a ridiculous yellow-and-black outfit, looking quizzically back at him. Beside him was a redhead, her hand half-extended to push him back on the bed. At least she was human. Pretty hot, too.

"I miss NASA," he sighed with feeling, and with his luck, he probably incurred a concussion when he fainted.

*

"You're trying to tell me that space-time _randomly_ decided to rip a tear in itself, and it _randomly_ chose to pull me out of my own time and _randomly_ plopped me down into an alternate universe where I encounter my younger _android_ doppelganger?"

"Well, when you put it like that," Geordi said.

"That is the most probable sequence of events," Data said.

"I could have gone to a four year old child if I'd wanted an explanation that idiotic," Fenway said, and hailed the nurse, snapping his fingers for more painkillers.

*

"Any idea when I'll be going back home? As lovely as it is to be abducted against my will -- and, depressingly enough, not the first time it's happened this month -- I was kind of in the middle of something when I got space-vacuumed out of my time."

"There's a seventy-eight percent chance that you'll return to your time if we can exactly duplicate the conditions of the anomaly happening at the moment you appeared," Geordi said.

"These calculations weren't done in crayon, by any chance, were they?"

Geordi handed him the PADD with a frown.

"Hey, real science, what a novelty. What about the other twenty-two percent that you're conveniently failing to mention?"

Geordi pursed his lips. "Let's just say it's nothing pretty."

"Hmm." Fenway considered. He looked at Crusher, off on the other side of the medbay working with samples. He looked at Data, who was watching him, unblinking. "What the hell. This day can only get worse, right?"

*

"Ever been married?"

"I have not participated in the human ritual of legally sanctioning a union." Data said.

"Consider yourself lucky," Fenway said, with a chuckle. He clapped Data on the shoulder. "Enjoy your youth while you have it."

"I do not age, therefore I have no 'youth' to enjoy."

Fenway frowned. "What kind of sick bastard designed you?"

Data, if he were the type, would have smiled. "You share a striking resemblance, actually."

*

"Good riddance," Geordi said, when the anomaly _blipped_ out of existence and, with it, Nigel Fenway.

"A most interesting human," Data said, and Geordi just shook his head, grumbling about one of them being more than enough.


End file.
